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What do you regret?

So sang Frank, and so to some extent, sing all of us I expect. You cannot get to my age without wondering how life might have played out if you had taken an altered path here, or made a different choice there. I’ve got some regrets, but not enough to spoil the life I eventually chose for myself. I’m going to list them here in no particular order. Maybe you might have similar regrets, or a whole tome of your own to publish!

I regret not having more children. My eldest son was hyperactive and hard work. There were years when both sons fought like cat and dog every day, and at the time I couldn’t envisage ever having the energy or the inclination to go through the months of sleepless nights with a third baby while still trying to keep the eldest boy under control. Sam said he’d rather cut it off with a rusty breadknife than go through the early baby years again, and so we stayed with the 2 we already had.

I regret not following the arts more at school. I struggled with Maths, Physics and Chemistry for years, not realising at the time that I’d never have the talent to become a doctor. Now I know my brain was more wired towards Creative Writing, Art and Music. My parents told me I’d never make a living with the arts, and to concentrate on the sciences. However, unfortunately I never made a living with the sciences either!

I regret turning a blind eye for so long to Sam’s addictions to porn and alcohol. If I had lived true to myself as I do now, then our problems would have been sorted out years ago. We’ve had 5 lovely years with no addictions at all, and I’ve got back the man I married in 1980, albeit older, wiser, but now rather guilt-ridden I think. However, our issues helped me to get started on a writing career in my early fifties, and so some good came out of it.

I regret never having a proper mother-daughter relationship with my own mother. She’s 91 now and has always been very difficult to get along with. I care for her now out of a sense of duty. ‘Nuff said.

I regret not going to university and studying for a degree in English. My mother always told me that ‘people like me didn’t go to university’, and it was just for doctors, lawyers and teachers. When I see some of the subjects that students can study at university these days, I realise I was born in the wrong time.

I regret not having any brothers and sisters, but as I can’t do anything about it, it’s not worth going into that one.

I regret sometimes being too strict with my eldest son, but he was the proverbial handful, and when I see the successful man he has become today, I tell myself that perhaps it was all for the best.

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4 thoughts on “What do you regret?”

I regret becoming a landscape architect. I’ve wasted twenty years trying to make a living from this career. It’s a limited profession with no ‘transferable skills.’ I’d be earning more money on the bins.

I regret taking advice from about the age of 12. None of it turned out to be any good.

I have no regrets. Are there things I would like to think I would have done differently? Of course, and I often imagine what life would have been like had I made some other choices. However, all of my yesterdays led to my today; and I like my today.
Had I not given into (financially based) parental pressure, I would perhaps have remained at school, gone on to university to study modern languages and maybe followed my dream to enter the diplomatic corps. Would my life have been better? Different, yes, but better? Who knows? I certainly would not have been working where I was in 1979 when I met Clare, and that would have been a loss, and we wouldn’t be retired together in the middle of France now, and that would be a pity, because it’s good.
Apart from anything else, though, the majority of choices I have made throughout my life I made because of who I was; my personality, my hopes and fears, my drives and brakes. Those would still be the same, and it is most likely that my choices would be, were I presented with them again.
In the words of Michel Vaucaire, “Non, je ne regrette rien“

Great reply, thanks Keith. We make our choices depending on our circumstances at the time. My parents expected me to leave school and find a job, so I did. Sometimes I think it would have been nice to have been given the choice of going to university, but the trick is to be happy with what you have got. Acceptance is the key, and I could certainly have done a lot worse.